


I Felt Your Shape

by th_esaurus



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Body Horror, Domestic Violence, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 09:32:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8619118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: Graves gets to his knees. His palms slide down Credence's shoulders, to his chest, and Graves rests his head against the boy's thin belly, one ear to his stomach. "There is nothing dangerous in you," he says. "Nothing at all."He sounds—disappointed.





	

He used to dream of a black cacophony, a gasping maw that made him scared to sleep and slow to wake; lately, Credence dreams of Percival Graves.

*

His ma says he has a sickness. His birth mother – a _harlot_ , she whispers – infected him in the womb, sucked the nourishment from him and gave nothing back, pushed him out of her and left him to the night's demons. He must make his voice quiet, she says, to keep from speaking in tongues; hunch his body small, so that he is not swelled with pride; stay his gaze low, so that passersby cannot see his soul. They will beat the wickedness out of him together, his ma says, like beating dust motes from a carpet, and Credence replies, "Thank you, mother."

The second time they meet, Percival Graves tells him quite calmly that he is a wizard. "Your mother – your real mother, that is, not that charlatan – was likely a witch." He says it as though he's announcing the time of day, or commenting on the weather.

He has a length of dark, whittled wood in his greatcoat pocket, neatly polished, which he offers to Credence.

"Sir," Credence murmurs, barely louder than the breeze, "I couldn't."

"It won't hurt you," Graves says kindly. "Here, put up your palms."

He puts out only his left hand, shaking. His right is fresh with purplish welts. He does not want the skin to break. To stain Graves' pressed suit.

"Do you know what it is?"

Credence nods, unable to speak it.

"Tell me if you feel anything from it."

Credence cannot bring himself to make a fist around it, and lets the wood roll limp in his hand. He closes his eyes for a moment. It has a good weight, a pleasing smoothness, but feels no more special to him than a planed stick might.

"Nothing," he swallows, miserable.

"That's quite all right," Graves tells him softly, laying a hand on his shoulder. Credence's chest stutters at the touch. "You've kept it hidden for so long."

"I don't—think I can help you, Mr. Graves—"

Graves' smile does not falter for a moment. His eyes are warm and low, and his thumb moves half an inch to rest on the skin between Credence's high collar and his chin. Credence can count on one hand the number of times he has touched other people's skin. Holding Modesty's chin to feed her when she is sick with the cold. The palms of strangers on his cheek when they shove him aside on the bustling streets. His fingertips brushing against his ma's as he hands her his belt.

"I have faith in you," Graves murmurs. His thumbnail against Credence's neck.

*

Credence dreams of Percival Graves. Dreams that he raises his wand, and all the blackness is sucked into the tip of it, fighting and squirming to be pulled down into so tiny a hollow. Credence fears it will overcome him, that the wood will simply fissure and snap under the pressure of it. But Graves simply plants his feet to ground himself, and holds on.

The boy wakes before all the black is gone.

*

He takes Credence to a tearoom high up above New York's sewers and commerce and slums, where the skyline is still being built. They are served warm scones and Graves asks for coffee, black, and Credence sits on both his palms to stop himself from eating before Graves has broken bread.

"Tell me," Graves says, splitting a scone in two and buttering the halves. "Have you ever noticed—strange occurrences happening around you? Voices, visions. The ability to move objects with your eyes or words. The ability to—influence people."

Credence shakes his head unhappily.

"We call it wandless magic," Graves carries on, as though Credence had not dealt him a disappointment. "It often manifests in children born to No-Maj parents, before they are aware of their gift." He smiles, perhaps to himself. "Although you are no child, Credence."

Something deep and knotted untwists violently in Credence's stomach, when Graves murmurs his name.

"I have—dreams," Credence manages. He has not eaten since noon the day before.

"Tell me?"

Credence swallows. "That I am—that there is—something wretched in me. It is not—of this world, I think." He whispers, as though there might be eavesdroppers. Children from his ma's house, sent to spy. As if any of them would be allowed in a place like this.

"It's nothing to fear. You dream of your magic, and nothing more. Your natural state. I can teach you to bring it out of your unconscious and into the world."

A black flash scuttles across his vision. To loose that on the unsuspecting—Credence startles at the thought. "Sir, you mustn't—"

"Shh, my boy. Don't fret. We will come to it."

Graves offers his palm in friendship. Credence cannot take it. So Graves brushes his knuckles against Credence's pale cheek instead. He flushes instantly, both at the site of the touch as though marked, and lower, a tingling flame slithering through his veins.

He is unsturdy. He is not—reliable, Credence thinks, terrified.

"There is something you must help me with in return," Graves says, ever so soft.

*

Credence dreams of Percival Graves. This time he sucks the black mass in through his mouth and nostrils, inhaling until it seems he should burst. His body is strong and unmoving, only his chest rising as it fills with the darkness of the void. For a moment, his pupils become black with it, and his lips, and the tips of his fingers, stained with Credence's filth.

And then he exhales, at last, and breathes out only warm air.

*

Credence has no direct means of communicating with Graves – they set a time and place at the end of each tryst, all of them dancing around his ma's daily routine – but he must speak with him. He feels it so strongly that he will shake himself apart if he cannot speak with Graves.

He scribbles out four notes, on the back of his ma's pamphlets, all of them the same:

_Mr. G,_

_Please come,_

_Yours, C_

These he pins to railings across the city, in the blithe hope that Graves will see one. Credence has the strange sensation that Graves must be omniscient – for what does he know of the difference between wizards and gods? - and that he can see everything that lingers in the city. He will simply hear the message all the louder for its multiplicity.

Graves comes to him at night on the roof of his ma's house. Credence can hardly open the window for his trembling. Graves' footsteps are silenced by magic but even his breathing, the whip of his coat in the wind, seem loud as marching drums.

He helps Credence out the little window, and up onto the tiles, holding Credence against him to staunch the cold wind.

"Keep hold," he says, more serious than Credence has ever seen him. "Tuck your head under my chin and do not let go of my waist, do you understand?"

"I—"

"Take a deep breath," Graves orders sternly; and then they are vanished.

Credence feels a terrible weight upon his chest, like iron chains under his skin, a vise around his lungs, all the breath forced from him. His vision is blinded by thick darkness and the most vivid light, his ears stoppered with a brutal noise and viscous silence. His skin is not skin, his bones are not bones, and all he has left in the world is the unyielding shape of Graves' hips under his hands that are not hands.

Not a moment later, he is reborn.

The sensation melts away from him instantly. He cannot remember anything ever being out of sorts.

"What—"

"Central Park," Graves murmurs. "We can speak here, though we cannot linger. Your mother will miss you, and I have—duties to attend."

It never occurred to Credence that Graves might have—prior engagements.

"Forgive me," he whispers.

"I _will not_ ," Graves spits, angry for a second. He runs his hand through his slick hair. "There is nothing to forgive," he says, softer.

Carefully, Graves untangled their bodies. He puts both his hands on Credence's shoulders. "Tell me what has made you so desperate, my dear boy," he says. His kind smile settling about his lips.

"I—" Credence falters. He is so unused to words, he doesn't know how to phrase the thing. "You are stronger than I am, Mr. Graves. I'm—this thing inside me. I cannot hold it. But you can—you could hold it, Mr. Graves—"

"It does not need to be _held_ , it needs to be taught—"

"No, please," Credence begs, and his eyes feel hot, and he wills himself not to cry. He is weak. His ma always—she said he was—

"Please," he whispers again. "Cut it out of me. It's yours. It's yours."

Graves looks solemn. His hands seem heavy, or perhaps Credence simply has no more strength to bear them. "My boy," he murmurs. "You talk as though I could carve you up like a suckling pig."

Graves gets to his knees. His palms slide down Credence's shoulders, to his chest, and Graves rests his head against the boy's thin belly, one ear to his stomach.

"There is nothing dangerous in you," he says. "Nothing at all."

He sounds—disappointed.           

*

Credence dreams of Percival Graves.

Graves presses his mouth to Credence's skin.

He tears out a chunk of his flesh, just below his ribcage.

It is clean. No blood, no mess. After all, there is nothing inside Credence. Only black.

And Graves laps at the darkness like a panther at a watering hole.

*

Credence wakes up with his seed spilt on his thighs and the bedclothes. He bundles them up before dawn and goes to the yard, pumps up water from the faucet into a bucket and scrubs at the stain he's made of the sheets.

Then he locks himself in the outhouse and crouches down, and retches, almost all water.

The smell of it, at least, covers his shame.

His ma asks him if he is coming on with a fever, and he shakes his head. "It is your wickedness," she decides. "It flees as your soul becomes clean."

"Thank you, mother. That must be it."

"Do not become complacent, Credence," she says, quiet as ever. "You have far yet to go."

"Thank you, mother."

He does not try to see Graves.

He hands out his pamphlets all day, six hours, until the bankers and office men leave their towers and make their way home. Then there is nobody left to listen to the preaching of the Second Salemers except for drunkards and loose women.

Credence trails home too.

He does not sleep, but stares at the ceiling until dawn gasps through the window above his bed.

And then he does the same again. Eight hours today.

He is meant to meet Graves, in the close alley just off Dean and Sixth. But he still has a fistful of sheets his ma pressed herself, and she would not be best pleased if he returned with a full hand, and so he walks up and down the residences, folding a crisp pamphlet and placing one into each mailbox he finds.

And then he goes home, and does not sleep.

On his third day of wakefulness, someone takes a pamphlet, and then does not move on.

"You missed our appointment," Graves says, tightly.

Credence stares at the pavement. The flicker of feet coming into view and then disappearing again just as suddenly. "I—"

"I was frantic," Graves murmurs.

Credence looks up at him.

"My boy," Graves breathes. "You look half starved."

"I'm eating," Credence says, which is not a lie. Crackers and soup.

"When did you last sleep?"

"I—I'm not—sure—"

Graves takes an urgent step closer to him. His polished shoes are brushing right against Credence's feet. "What can you tell your mother, if you're away for the night?"

"That the devil took me," Credence keens, utterly miserable.

Graves grabs him by the collar, a flurry of movement. Credence meets his eyes for the first time and they are wide with fury. "Straighten up. Come on, straighten your back. Stand tall. What will you tell your mother."

"I—" Credence sucks in a breath, and half of it is cool air and half of it is Graves' hot exhale. "I can tell her that—I stayed with—a follower. Who wished to know more. About our—good work, at the church."

"That will do," Graves relents, and he threads his strong arm through the nook in Credence's elbow, and walks him to an empty alleyway four blocks down. He takes out his wand, and Credence watches in awe and horror as he taps a sequence of stones in the blank wall.

The bricks part for him as easily as the red sea for Moses; and the hole in the wall welcomes them both in.

It looks like a hotel lobby, inside the wall, or at least what Credence imagines such riches to look like. Warm and clay-red, with flickering candles in sconces and fireplaces, a small man at a large desk and a luggage trolley ambling by with no bell boy to push it.

Graves still has his arm tightly wrapped around Credence's. He leans in and whispers gently, "Close your eyes. I'd rather not overwhelm you."

Credence is grateful for the excuse. He lets himself be walked carefully this way and that, absently listens to murmured voices – the number of a room, the rattle of an old key. He thinks he toes nudge the first step of a staircase but then he feels Graves seem to lift him just slightly by the elbow, and he feels light, weightless, carried for a brief moment until his feet touch flat floorboards once more. They creak under him, and Credence whispers madly to himself, "I am real—"

"Almost there," Graves tells him kindly.

The clatter of a heavy door opening, and the creaking thump as it closes.

"Here, now," Graves says, solid and warm. "You can sleep the night in peace."

Credence blinks his eyes open. The room is—not opulent, perhaps, to the everyman, but it pulls the breath from him. Every corner filled with small trinkets of the sort his ma would never allow, facetted glass tumblers and bronze candlesticks and an old mahogany headboard, carved with a strange eagle. Graves traverses the walls and mantelpieces, turning each hanging panting to face away from him, shushes half of them angrily, though Credence cannot guess why.

He pulls back the duvet on the too-wide bed, and sits on the end of it, inviting.

"Will you—stay?" Credence asks, flush with his own anathema.

Graves' gaze slides away from him. "You'll be safe, I swear it. When I find—when we find what we're looking for," he says, oddly distant, "every night will be like this."

"Will you stay with me then?"

"When?"

"When I have—my magic," Credence breathes. He feels—ravenous. Unsated.

"Is that what you want?" Graves asks, and he sounds very tired.

"Only if you—"

"You may desire things for yourself," Graves snaps, slapping at the mattress with a sharp backhand; and then he collects himself. Closes his eyes, breathes in. "Yes, I will stay tonight, if you want it."

"Please," Credence whispers.

Graves undresses him with a firm hand. He turns Credence all around, examining the lash marks across the tops of his shoulder-blades and the welts on the backs of his wrists, an ugly hum in his mouth. There is a spiteful burn on Credence's left leg, just at the top of his inner thigh, and Graves measures it against the size of his hand. "It doesn't hurt me anymore," Credence tells him, as if that was the problem. It had happened when he was far younger, less prone quietness, and his ma had pressed a just-boiled kettle against his leg until he could learn to be silent. It had killed all the nerves under the scar, and he can only feel Graves' light fingertips as they slide back onto his tender skin.

It's sudden, and so much.

He jerks back as though burnt anew.

"Steady," Graves hushes him. He leans in, and presses his mouth just under the mark, and that is too much by far.

Credence skitters back to the bed. He is naked now, and when he bundles the sheets around him, they're softer than he knows, warmer than he deserves. He buries his face in the duvet, breathing in and out, and listens to Graves undress. The metal clatter of his braces. The shuffle of his shoes being toed off. The sound of his cufflinks placed with care on the vanity.

He slides into bed behind Credence. All of his skin, miles and miles of it, it seems, pressed into Credence's back, locking their legs together, winding his hands around Credence's bony chest and letting them come to rest, quite naturally, one in the dip of his collarbone and one in the mess of hair just above Credence's shame.

Credence cries out. It's a soft, dying noise that Graves shushes gently, at once.

"Come now," he chides. "You asked me to stay."

It's only that—Credence did not know he could feel so much. Not like this, not all in one go.

He feels as though, if he pushed back hard enough, he could hide his whole body inside Graves. Graves could contain his wickedness, Credence thinks. He would be strong enough. He would not dream of black shapes and the angry dark.

He would, Credence thinks, not dream of Credence Barebone either.

"There is—something inside me—" he gasps, his eyes wet—no, his lips are wet, his eyes have already sprung tears, saltwater slipped unnoticed down his cheeks. He needs Graves to understand, more desperately than he needs anything.

Graves presses his lips to the jut of bone at the top of Credence's spine. Credence knows what the word _kiss_ means, but struggles to equate it with the act. He simply has no point of reference.

"If I were inside you," Graves murmurs, very, very low, "There would be no room for anything else."

*

Credence dreams of a black cacophony, slinking up in every part of him, filling up his innards with tar, bubbling in his open mouth, writhing inside every inch of his body he ever thought private.

Credence dreams of a black cacophony.

Or perhaps he dreams of Percival Graves.


End file.
